A ribbon at a time
by ultraviolet9a
Summary: would be spoilery. But it picks up where season 2 finale left off. It’s a fic about how things might go sort of thing, rounding up the future. includes Ellen, Bobby, Jo along with the Winchesters


A ribbon at a time

* * *

Jo Harvelle shows up at Bobby's doorstep about four days after all hell broke loose. She's got a big duffel bag she can hardly carry and there are circles under her eyes. Rumsfeld barks at her, but Bobby stays him and shuts the book he is reading. 

"Well," he says, looking her up and down and then smiles beckoning her. And that's all there is to it.

* * *

"Where's my mom?" Jo asks.

"She'll be here soon," Bobby says.

Of course she has to go through the holy water drinking ritual, just like her mother did, days ago.

"Don't think I'll be serving you alcohol any time soon," Bobby says when holy water is in her belly and no smoke is coming out. Jo's eyes fill with tears.

"I guess all's true then, isn't it?" she asks. Bobby nods. She leans with her elbows on the table, head between her palms. Her hair is greasy and sticks to her skin.

"Everything is so fucked up," she says. "Everything is just so fucked up, Bobby. What the hell are we going to do?"

He reaches out and strokes her hair because it's the only thing he can think of, and then she moves her chair and leans against him the way she used to against her father. She cries. Bobby holds her and his fingers move through her hair.

"The best we can do, sunshine," he says. "The best we can do."

* * *

Ellen walks in with bags full of foodstuff she dumps on the table, followed by Dean and Sam. They look tired. They carry bags too, with different sort of provisions. 

"Got what we need?" Bobby asks.

"We got it," Dean says.

"I guess we drive off tomorrow."

"Tomorrow it is then," Ellen says. Bobby looks at her kindly, points with a finger at the bedroom.

"Not you, Ellen. You got to take care of Jo."

"She's here already?" Ellen's eyes open wide and she moves towards the room when Bobby grabs her by the arm.

"She's sleeping. I got no maternal instincts or anything, but if you ask me she sure as hell could use some rest."

"Won't wake her up then. Just got to see her."

She does. Jo is cuddled up under a sheet and the room is dark, so Ellen closes the door behind her softly.

"How long has it been since you last seen her?" Bobby asks.

"A couple of months," Ellen says. "Why?"

* * *

Ellen's eyes turn immediately to Dean. 

"Whoa," he says hands turned up. "Wasn't me."

Sam is pale.

"Did I…?"

"No," Jo says. "No, you didn't. Breathe. It wasn't you back then."

"Jo, I'm…"

Jo lifts her palm.

"Wasn't you back then, Sam. No bad blood between us."

Sam lets out a breath he doesn't know he is holding.

"Jo," Ellen starts but Jo's palm is in the air again.

"I'm going to say this only once," she says. "I didn't plan it. Just happened."

Her palm rests back against her belly. She's always been bean string thin, and she still is. Except that part of her body.

"One night stand, the father doesn't know it, I can't contact him even if I wanted to and if it's going to be a boy I'm going to call him William Ash Harvelle. If it's a girl, Billy Ashley Ellen. Alright? Right. Now, is there anything around here to eat?"

* * *

The Winchesters and Bobby drive off the next day. They got to close again Colt's gigantic devil's trap, just in case. Got to fix the rail lines that got screwed over. Which won't be that tough, cuz Bobby knows his way around metal. Salvage yard and all that. 

It takes them three more days to bind the place anew, which is really short time considering that the extra fortification they build around Bobby's place took one whole day.

Ellen and Jo stay behind. They communicate every day just to make sure that everything's alright. As much as it can be.

Only when they return do they go to the roadhouse and salt and burn all who lie there properly.

Dean expects that Jo will cry because there is family burnt on that ground, family and memories, but Jo doesn't blink. Her mouth is just one harsh line as she stands right next to her mother, and at that moment, both look as if they were made from the same mould.

* * *

"About two hundred of them loose ain't good news," Bobby says, holding his cap between two fingers, the other two scratching his skull. "But that's not exactly priority right now, if you catch my drift, boys." The boys do. 

"What exactly is the priority right now?" Jo says, walking inside the room. She's holding a plate with a ham and pineapple sandwich.

"Priority right now is to be safe," Dean says. Lies roll easily off his tongue but she doesn't seem entirely convinced. It's lucky she's got the attention span of a goldfish lately, or else she'd be pushing till she heard what she wanted. Right now, one hand on the belly, the other on the plate, she lets herself sink on the couch and her eyes seem to drift away to some internal land, just her and the life she's carrying.

"Everything will work out fine," Ellen says. She's been told the truth. They kept it from Jo. Jo has got a different burden to carry. "Just fine." Lies roll easily off her tongue too.

* * *

"Dean?" Sam asks. They're sharing the same room they had since childhood, when dad brought them and left them with uncle Bobby on and off. 

"What, Sammy?"

"It's just… I can't believe that it's over. With the demon."

"Well, it is. It's like a weight lifted off my shoulders, you know? We did good, Sammy. We did good."

Sam doesn't mention the burden on his. Wonders if Dean felt the same way after dad died.

It's quiet, the quiet most houses have during the night. Some sort of peace.

"Dean…"

"What?"

"This war isn't ours anymore. Right now the only thing that matters…"

"I know, Sam. Don't worry about it. Get some sleep."

Sam sighs. Tries not to let things that have already sunk in float back again. Instead he folds his hands on his belly and prays for all he's loved and lost. All he's loved and still has. For his father to be with his mother. He closes his eyes.

In the quiet, at the borders of sleep, he hears Dean's voice whispering

"Hey, Sammy. You think Jo's going to have a boy or a girl?"

* * *

Over the next weeks Bobby, Ellen and the boys call up every hunter they know and bid them to keep on networking because demons are on the loose. They know it's their war too, but for now they… delegate. There are wounds to be licked, see. There are people to be cared for. To be protected. 

Bobby and Sam take turns in researching into the demons as well as a way to keep time running for Dean. Some of the demons they've already tracked down, but so far only one's been put down. Sons of bitches are strong. A whole goddamn army, running around like a headless chicken.

All hunters aware of the war spread the word. All of them refer to Bobby's, emailing or calling up to tell them what they've tracked down, and how crime rates have increased in certain areas and how there were some freak accidents and how they'll try to get them. It won't be easy. Shit, nothing's easy, and Bobby's place becomes unofficial headquarters of a sort, and he finds himself the head of a network of hunters that still counts its losses. He didn't choose it. He's not a military man, has never been, for him are the shadows, the studying, the knowledge, the solitary hunt, and goddammit, he's got two wars to fight and it's too much. Demons? Eventually he knows they'll get them. But Dean…time runs too fast for Dean.

Bobby looks across the table to Sam. He's got a pen he moves around his fingers the way his father did with a knife, and he's deep absorbed in a grimoire Bobby's given him. It must be hard on him, Bobby knows that, but Sam has latched fiercely on to hope, turned despair into stamina and belief. He's going to save Dean. There is no other scenario his mind will play out, but Bobby knows that as time passes, Sam's hope will turn into frenzy.

Sam closes the book with a huff. For just a moment, something crosses over his face, something that occupies the other side of hope, and Bobby can't help thinking that if the crossroad deal is kept, perhaps Dean is going to be the luckier of the two.

Then Sam says he's hungry and on his way to the kitchen touches Bobby on the back in easy familiarity. Bobby wipes his eyes.

In the long run, Bobby thinks, he can offer up his own life for Dean.

If he can find a way to keep Sam alive too.

* * *

Jo's belly is big. It's like a reverse clock, filling up with time, just as Dean's time is running out. Dean doesn't mind. Dean doesn't think of time, not the way Sam and Bobby and Ellen do. Sometimes he sits next to Jo on the porch swing Ellen buys for her and puts his palm on her belly. Feels the baby kick and that soothes him. Makes him feel alright about the world. About his life. 

Now that she's pregnant, Dean brings tenderness to Jo he never had for her before, but things are different now, see. The Demon is dead and he had his goodbye with his father and Sammy is safe and Dean tries to make the most of the time he has left. There's some sort of balance, he's thinking, that will place a new life on earth before taking his. So his palm is on the belly, warm and protective, and he feels tenderness wash through him for Jo.

Jo's hand covers his. _It's not like that_, he wants to tell her, but what difference does it make anyway? This is the closest thing he'll ever have to _this_, so he doesn't say anything and doesn't move his hand away when he watches Ellen looking at them thoughtful from the door.

* * *

Ellen has waded through shit in her life and got wounds that never healed. Bill. Ash. The Roadhouse. Good people there. Hell, even John, she's thinking, one more guy dying on some demon cause. 

But she's got Jo and the baby Jo's carrying and her life has a new purpose, a new fierce fire to it. She misses her old life, but old organizational skills she acquired over the years she now uses to help Bobby, help all those hunters against the demons. She's good at that too. It gives her a sense of stability, a sense she's making the world safer for her and her grandchild.

Bobby walks in and tells her that one more demon has been put down, so she gets up and puts a small notch on the countdown board they have just for that purpose.

She suspects that both Sam and Bobby have a similar, secret board, but it's not demons they count down.

* * *

Jo now is one huge belly attached to a human body. She has difficulty getting up from the sofa, sliding forwards and then pushing with her hands to force her body up. She didn't have nausea all this time, but her pregnancy decided to make up for this lack of difficulty by making it near impossible for her to move easily. 

"Where's mom?" she asks walking in with the slow clumsy step of a duck.

"She went shopping with Bobby," Dean says.

"You alright?" Sam asks.

She nods. Her hands are looped around her belly.

"Peachy. It's just I'm dying to wash my hair."

Both look at her incomprehensibly. She rolls her eyes.

"I can't bend forward," she says, then points at her belly. "Way big. Hell, I can even put the plate on my belly when I'm watching TV, and it won't fall off."

Dean starts laughing.

"You trying to make a waiter of that Kid, Jo?"

"You think you're funny, Dean Winchester, but you're not. Sam, tell him."

"You're not funny," Sam smiles and Dean grins.

"Why don't you take a full bath then?" Sam says again in the tone of someone who has everything worked out and can't figure out for the life of him where the problem is.

Jo looks at him as if he's said the most stupid thing ever.

"I just want to wash my _hair_."

Sam looks at his brother who only shrugs in his _she's a pregnant lady hormone swings _kind of way. Then Dean grins.

"Hey, Jo, come on. Why don't you call that doctor of yours? Is it going to be a boy or a girl?"

"Dean, for the hundredth time? I don't want to know. I'll wait. I'll let my kid surprise me." Her eyes take again a faraway look and both boys know that there is a communication going between mother and child. Dean remembers it, remembers his own mother with a huge belly and how tiny his own palm was against it, but it's dreamlike, the faded memory of a young child. Tenderness washes over him again.

"Come on, Jo," he says. "Let's get your hair washed."

By the time Bobby and Ellen are back, the boys have wedged an old mattress in the bathroom and have propped it against the bathtub's side. Jo is leaning against it, head dangling backwards in the tub. Dean's washing her hair, narrating about that time in Tulsa when he single-handedly killed the evil gnomes and the world was safe. Sam is lying beside her, ear stuck on her belly and tells Dean that that Kid just spoke.

"What did the Kid say?" Dean says. "How much he liked uncle Dean's adventures?"

"Nope. That you're full of crap, because you were ten years old and those were garden gnomes."

Jo's belly shakes with laughter.

* * *

It's December when Jo has what they've been calling the Kid. And it's not a Kid really. It's kids. Twins. The girl she names Ashley Ellen. The boy she names William John, because, she says, there can't be any more bad blood. And because…she doesn't say it, but her mother understands. Dean doesn't. He thinks only of John and then makes up an excuse and goes outside and tries not to cry. 

"I want you to be the godfather," Jo says turning to Bobby and Bobby grunts an embarrassed yes, but his eyes are twinkling.

And the clock is ticking.

* * *

The routine changes after that. Jo is a full time mom and Ash and Will are the cutest things ever but demand to be fed and cradled and changed and washed twenty four seven. 

And there's a war raging. Two wars. Sam and Bobby don't give up, but time feels heavy, so heavy on them, and not even cradling the little ones can take that feeling of being chased down away.

Ellen is a grandmother. Dean is the only one unfazed by time. Ellen wakes up in the middle of the night to Ash or Will crying, only to find out that Dean has already gotten up and the babies are changed or fed or softly sung to sleep. Sometimes she watches Jo watch him and this is wrong, so wrong and Ellen's heart flutters in panic. Jo has worked some things out, but she doesn't realize how serious this is, is too wrapped up in fresh motherhood for that.

And Dean is there, leaving the fight for time to Bobby and Sam, cradling the twins as if he has all the time in the world.

"Don't do that," Ellen says. The sound of the rain outside almost swallows her voice.

"Don't do what?" Dean replies in genuine surprise.

"Don't…"

"Ellen. Can I talk with you for a minute? I can't make out your handwriting," Bobby says holding a piece of paper and Ellen finds herself ushered outside.

"Don't do this to him," Bobby says. He crumples the paper and shoves it in his pocket.

"Don't do what?"

"What you were about to do, Ellen."

"I got to tell him to stop, Bobby. I got to protect her. She can't lose him too."

"If you tell him that, Ellen, I swear to God, I'm going to beat the crap out of you woman or not."

"I wanna see you try that, Bobby," Ellen says slowly. There's a glint to her eyes. "She's my girl. I got to protect her."

"She's your girl, but they're my boys. If you tell him to stop, it's like telling him that he's going to die one hundred per cent. I can't have that. You won't take those boys' hope away from them, Ellen. They've been through a lot. I won't let you."

They both stand in the rain, listening to it fall, listening to time fly by on sturdy relentless wings.

* * *

There's not that much time left, Sam knows. He can't find anything, no deal on demons, nothing. He curses everyday the sun sets and curses everyday the sun rises, watching it conquer the sky ribbon by ribbon till it's a full fledged circle in the sky. 

He wants to die. Wants to take the deal back. Wants to make everything alright. Wants to keep Dean safe.

He closes yet another book with a loud thud, lets his head hanging between his palms, feels the first tears hot and stinging in his eyes and doesn't even realize how his whole body is shaking in loud sobs. Then a warm body is next to him, palms on his shoulders and Sam turns and hides his face on it, arms around Ellen's waist and cries, and cries like a little boy, Ellen's hands on his back and hair, Ellen's smell the smell of a woman and a mother and a hunter, whispering how it's going to be alright, Sam, it's going to be alright.

He doesn't believe her.

* * *

It's always something random, Sam thinks. If the Demon had picked somebody else and not him, life would have been different. 

If the demon that is now trapped in front of them was just any demon, that would have been different. But this is not any demon. This is the demon, that, for lack of a better name, they call Meg, this time in the body of a brunette.

"It was nice wearing you," is the first thing she says when she sees them. It all rolls from there.

Because Meg isn't just a demon of the army. Meg is the Demon's daughter. Meg is strong.

"Just how strong?" Sam asks. Bobby looks at him. Then at Meg.

"If you want out," Bobby says, "We need a favour. Or else I swear I'll spend the rest of my life torturing you in any way that I can, making sure you're never free. And I'm going to train people, generation after generation to do the same. You think you know hell? You don't. You'll learn. I'll teach you. I'll _make_ your life hell. Forever."

He means it. Sam's never seen Bobby this angry before.

Meg believes him.

* * *

The Impala is on an empty corn field. Dean insisted he had to be away from home (and odd how Bobby's turned into home in only few months), keep all safe, be alone. Sam wouldn't hear of it, and there is nothing that can bypass vintage Winchester stubbornness. 

It's Dean's last official time, see.

So there they are, watching the night fly away on dark wings.

"Hey, Dean?" Sam asks. "You think Meg can be trusted? I mean…she's a demon. They lie."

Dean pats him on the leg.

"We all do."

He would have liked to explain to Sam how he's at peace like never before in his life. Because life goes on, it always goes on, with Ash and Will. Because he had his dream in the end, he had a family with Sam and Bobby and Ellen and Jo and the kids. Because he wasn't feeling alone or weary in his bones anymore.

Afterlife wouldn't be so bad if he found dad and mom, he's thinking, though that is not an option. Still, dad found mom. Must have. There's hope.

He wonders how it will all play out.

"If this doesn't work," Sam says. "I'll open the gate again." His fingers reach out and entwine with his brother's. Dean gives him a slight squeeze.

"And then what, Sammy?"

"Then I'll march into hell myself and get you out," Sam says. "That's a promise."

Dean doesn't doubt it.

Darkness has faded in the imminent dawn.

One more day to come, and if it's a day for him too, he doesn't know. He doesn't mind either. Time might be running out for him, but for the rest of the world it isn't, and that's alright. He's one man, after all.

And he's done what was asked of him.

He can lay his head down now.

Sun comes up in a thin ribbon that will grow wider and wider soon.

They wait.

-The End.

* * *

_I'll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time. _

_Emily Dickinson_

* * *

DISCLAIMER: Wordweaving's mine. The rest is wishful thinking.

NOTE: It hit me out of nowhere. So I hit it back.


End file.
